NIGHT 23

Night 23. Saturday 9 December 2022.

It is definitely colder. The scaffold poles glisten and shine. We tread carefully. G has a paint balling party to get to. E’s football is cancelled due to pitches frozen solid. I ‘m not too upset as the to do, to be, list is big.  We are invited around to Kat and Nat’s and it is a gorgeous change from our house that has plummeted into dismal chaos. Nat opens the door in a sweatshirt saying DAFT. So warm and welcoming and full of so much style and love – a matryoshka doll banister knob, fox milk jug, massive image of a burning car. They work in costume in film and their house is similarly full of creativity – children drawing and sun streaming in on a Christmas tree reminding me of how I’m not doing well on any of these fronts. They’ve baked the most delicious mince pies I ‘ve had with the addition of cream cheese inside. Lisa Marie and her friend H are coming. Lisa Marie was producer on Bank Job when she worked for Doc Society and it is great to see her again. She goes straight on the crowdfunder to donate and later I see her message is ‘You Go Guys! Love you.’ Love you too and everyone sending such support this way. Crowdfunder is now around £96,000.  Dan heads off to the street’s communal potluck meal with the most recent POWER STATION trailer film to show. I just need to clean the house to keep things functioning. This morning entering the back door tired and chilled we were met with a pile of dog diarrhoea strategically placed all over the henry hoover nozzle. It seemed to sum everything up. I have managed the downstairs and the washing but the upstairs remains looking like a squat – the bedding that we haven’t used for 3 weeks now occupied by the dogs and not faring well. Clothes and random cups of water everywhere. A package arrives. It is a gorgeous pink velvet lampshade I bought on Ebay from up on the roof in my attempts to make things more homely  - unfortunately making the classic online shopping mistake of not really picturing sizes - it is tiny. At least when we’ve finished on the roof I can bring that lamp in, hang some Christmas lights and be a step on the way to some kind of cosiness. When Dan’s Mum was alive she used to pass on her ‘Country Living’ magazines to me and it was a moment of escape pouring over the interiors and lifestyles – the fresh cut sweet peas in vivid vases, embroidered rugs and well organised kitchens. Oh well.

Dan’s just shared the daily/nightly email – a story of how Tink our dog is becoming our major antagonist in this quest. He also shares the weather and mentions squiggly lines. What are they! I go to the weather forecast. I can’t see these wavy lines on the one I check out but it does mention freezing fog. Wonderful. G has had an adventure today. Rikke sends pictures of them in action and they look like they’re in real life Fortnite – camo all in ones and bane style head gear.

The crowdfunder is moving upwards – by late afternoon at £96,171. I think we’ll still have to ascend to the rooftop bed but the end is in sight. Which is good as we have another big campaign to run around the school’s bid for Christmas number one and a lot of sorting of the practicalities of the installation and developing the POWER STATION further via street by street action and brokering relationships for community sites. We didn’t get a big fund for the film production and just got another rejection letter for another big fund for the running costs and training and employment so still have a lot to do.

The foxes are wild tonight. Christmas trees are appearing in windows below. I love walking the streets with children and dogs after dark. Playing ‘guess what they’re watching?’ from a brief glimpse past trees into warm interiors with television screens flickering. Soaps and Christmas films and right now the football. I might bring our coloured outdoor lights up here. Someone suggested carols. I hear Dan coming up the ladder as a train passes. At 10.30 every night illuminated carriages of passenger trains are replaced by the thunderous approach of a darkened freight train. This time there was a flashing green light that scared us it felt so close and we wondered if it was a firework heading our direction.  We’ve always lived by railway tracks. In industrial sites in Hackney the buildings shook as goods trains passed by every night.  The poetry of international trade. China Shipping. Maersk. Evergreen. Evergreen - once invisible now memorable as it made headlines for blocking the Suez Canal. Global shipping bottleneck. In our summers on Hebridean islands we spotted Evergreen containers in landscapes barely green - bringing people’s lives to the islands and remaining themselves stranded in exile. 

This is the last night! We hit £100,000. There is so much support coming in. Dan activates a live stream and rambles, making decisions about whether to go down or not. We didn’t expect to so I didn’t make the bed not wanting the dogs to ruin it just before we could enjoy it. The majority of messages say things like ‘get down that ladder’ ‘get off the roof’ ‘get warm’ ‘get back inside’ and words to that effect. It’s an odd feeling as I ‘m not sure I want to! It’s 23.56 and there’s been a flurry of excitement and messages. Tink is barking and E pops her head out of the loft window. She’s happy we’ve made it and agrees wholeheartedly with the sentiment of us getting straight back inside. Dan’s off down the ladder. It’s really icy. I’m staying out just for a short while holding onto this. I just don’t want to go in. I love looking up at the stars hearing the surround sound with breath rising into icy air. Sarah says it’s like you’ve become reverse institutionalised.  The reasons I am going in are for the dogs and children’s sake. If it was just me I’d stay out. I never wake up sad up here. I think again of the man who’s slept for the last 25 years outside on the Isle of Rum and totally get it - particularly if you have access to warmth and shelter - a balance of inside and out. I slowly make the move back down, hyper aware of the glistening rungs and how comi-tragic and annoying it would be to fall at this point. I spy a perturbed Tink through the bathroom window. E is waiting at the back door and says ‘welcome home.’ We feel like we should have a hot toddy to celebrate and a wave of warm tiredness hits me.  It is time to move on otherwise I might just become the eccentric sleeping on the roof – losing sight of what motivated us to do it in the first place. Messages keep coming in - so many friends and supporters it’s overwhelming. As we sat in the kitchen I heard singing. It is only later that we realise who it was. Angela had come out onto her doorstep to sing to and for us. We only hear it later via mobile phone recording and we cry. “We’ve got all the love, all we need to change the world…” singing out into the night.

00.50. Tink takes her place next to us under the duvet. I relish stretching legs out and come to terms with not looking out over rooftops, hearing the train but not seeing it - my senses less keen. The black dog is nearby - Tink and Agnes but also something darker that the real dogs and love and work keep at bay. Keep all the colours in the picture. When we decided quite suddenly from one week to the next to erect the scaffold and get on the roof it was a matter of fact step on the road to building the power station. Now we find it did more than raise the money needed. It connected with people, built relationships with those near and far and each other – it galvanised the ambition and resilience to make this happen and it took us out of the ordinary to look again at this street where all of this radiates out from.  On Sunday 11th December, as what would have been ‘Night 24’ on the roof approaches we are glad that we are not ‘forced to camp.’ We nestle in the front room writing Christmas cards and decorating the tree and it’s only when I check whatsapp that someone says ‘it’s snowing!.’ We run to the window and see it coming down in massive flakes. We race outside onto the street. I grab the camera and film the children and adults alike sliding and snowball fighting. The street is alive, the scaffold has thick snow cover and I check the forecast as has become habit. Freezing fog approaching. The snow that makes G exclaim ‘it’s a winter wonderland’ may thaw quickly but for these hours it brings so much joy.